Taco Bueno Rolls in Drive-Thru Olympics

Taco Bueno, a 124-unit chain with restaurants in Texas and Oklahoma, recently completed a 7-week company-wide "Drive Thru Olympics" program designed to improve drive-thru times and ultimately revenues.

Restaurants in each of the system's four regions competed for cash prizes of $1000, $500, and $250 based on the lowest average drive-thru service time. The company invested in HM Electronics' System 30A to track times.

The results? Drive-thru times for the company as a whole improved 14 seconds; almost all stores showed at least some improvement; 9 percent of stores improved by more than 30 seconds; 30 percent improved by more than 20 seconds; almost half improved by more than 15 seconds; and almost two-thirds improved by more than 10 seconds.

The company also said it experienced a period sales record during the final 4 weeks of the contest -- a fact it attributed to a combination of the speed of service competition and a simultaneous rollout of credit card acceptance. The percentage of overall sales at the drive-thru also broke previous records.